The creation of fruit into decorative arrangements has been pioneered by Edible Arrangements Inc. These arrangements are colorful, festive and appealing to the eye. By being comprised of fruit, they are also edible and fun to experience. These arrangements have become extremely popular as a substitute for floral arrangements given for special occasions such as holidays, Valentine's Day, birthdays and the like. However, these arrangements are more than a “fruit basket” comprising an assembly of fruit, such arrangements have special appearances which mimic flowers such as daisies and the like. These clever designs present an eye appeal which renders the arrangements as fruit representing art.
The preparation of the fruit into suitable configurations for assembly into arrangements has become a specialized task. Many hours of creativity has been required in order to develop methods of processing fruit which can be done in a manner which is easily replicated for consistent application among franchisees of such business for maintaining the good will of the business.
The popularity of such fruit arrangements places undue burden on the businesses as multiple orders need to be filled. As the arrangements are personally made by hand, such arrangements require extensive amounts of time to prepare. The time required to prepare the fruit arrangements sometimes becomes problematic when exceptionally large volumes of orders for these distinctive bouquets are place on special occasions such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. On these particular events the craftsman are required to produce exceptionally large volumes of these displays which becomes very time consuming. Hence, a need arises for a system which enables a large volume of particular fruit components of fruit arrangements to be processed in a timely and consistent manner.
It is an object of the present invention to provide for an apparatus which enables the mass production of a fruit component for a fruit arrangement in a timely and consistent manner.